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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24571171">The Disappointed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/symphonie/pseuds/symphonie'>symphonie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Little Fires Everywhere (TV 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Gen, I love writing sad characters, Izzy is heartbroken, One Shot, POV Izzy, Running Away, Spoilers, hopelessness is my cup of tea, post 1x08, the ending killed me so I had to write something, what can i say, why are there no fics on this show</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:00:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24571171</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/symphonie/pseuds/symphonie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After seeing Mia leave and fighting with her mother, Izzy runs away and takes the first bus she finds. She doesn't know where she's going, and she certainly doesn't know what she's going to do, but she knows she can't stay. Izzy needs to get away from this house, from this life and from Elena. Nobody wants her there anyway.</p><p>...</p><p>I didn't read the book, so everything is based on the TV show.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Disappointed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this for me and wasn't planning on posting it, but I finished LFE yesterday and wrote this after, so why not? Not sure if anyone will actually read it since I haven't found a single fic on this show yet (maybe there are some and I'm just too dumb to find them vczffgsfdzgg whatever). But if anyone does read it, enjoy !</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nobody fucking wants her. Izzy watches the blurry landscape through the dirty window of her bus. She sets her forehead against the glass, and when a few seconds later the vehicle runs over a small bump on the road her head hits the window. Swearing under her breath, Izzy tilts her head back and closes her eyes. It's fine, though, because she doesn't want them either. She doesn't want this fucking dollhouse her mother locked her in, she doesn't want these ugly Christmas decorations, she doesn't want Shaker Heights and its lawns that can't be higher than five centimeters otherwise you get a fine, she doesn't want any of the bullshit she put on her wall just to piss off her mother. Just to piss off <em>Elena Richardson</em>. </p><p>It's cold on the bus and her feet are wet from walking in the snow wearing sneakers. She wiggles her toes a little but the feeling of the water in her socks sends a shiver through her body. When she looks around her, Izzy remembers she is almost alone in the bus. The old man sleeping at the back probably won't mind if she removes her shoes. So she takes them off and sets them on the seat next to her, bringing her legs against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She tries to forget that Mia left. </p><p>It's too good to be true when she abruptly finds herself on the side of the road, running towards Mia, who stopped her car when she saw Izzy hitchhiking. Izzy knows it's too good to be true, but she tries to hold on to the warming thought for a little while. She opens the door of the car, smiles at Pearl and her mother. Then the dream fades, she opens her eyes and she's still on the bus, alone. </p><p>A few hours pass. Izzy doesn't know when she should get out. She didn't even look at where the bus was heading, she just climbed into the first one she saw. The pulsing need to get as far from Elena as she could was consuming her. Now, when she stares at the seat in front of her for a little too long, Izzy can almost see flames rising from it. She can almost smell the oil she poured on her bed, on her walls, on her carpet, she can almost feel the smoke penetrating her lungs and tightening her throat until she can't breathe. But then she blinks, and it's gone. No fire.</p><p>Izzy steps out of the bus without asking where she is. She can feel the driver's stare on her back as she starts to walk down the small stairs, repositions her beanie, and hopes he doesn't talk to her.</p><p>"Sure it's a good idea to be out there all alone, in the middle of the night? You should be at home, not in the cold."</p><p>She doesn't answer anything. Doesn't even turn around to look at him. Home. He probably means house, because she doesn't have a home. Izzy's home is driving away from her, going god knows where because Elena wanted <em>revenge</em>. Because her mother is so miserable that everyone else has to be miserable too. She stays quiet and sits on the bench of the station, staring at her shoes. The bus leaves eventually, and Izzy is alone in the cold street.</p><p>Her house is cold too anyway, she didn't light the fire, so it's still cold. </p><p>Izzy hates them all. It's because of them that she's there, miles away from Shaker, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. She hates them so much that it's hard to truly define who <em>them</em> are. Maybe she doesn't hate Moody. Trip is an asshole. She definitely hates Lexie for being such an egoist, and her father for never defending her, she hates her mother for everything she is, she hates the people who decided to take away Bebe's baby, and she hates April. Oh, she fucking hates April and her huge brown eyes, she hates every single inch of her pretty face, she hates her lips and the way they felt against hers, she hates how April cared so little about her that pretending Izzy had <em>molested her</em> didn't seem to bother her. Pretending that they haven't been secretly kissing for the last year and spreading rumors about her at school has been so easy to do for April. So she hates her too.</p><p>When Izzy realizes she only has thirty dollars in her wallet, she starts laughing. It's ridiculous. She's ridiculous. What did she hope? That she would jump into a bus and start a new life with her thirty fucking dollars? But she can't go back home either, she knows it. She can't. She just can't go back there.</p><p>Izzy squeezes her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay. She hates herself for wanting to cry. Crying is useless. It's warm for a little while, and then it starts to get cold again. </p><p>
  <em>You won't swim forever.</em>
</p><p>A tear escapes when she hears Mia's voice in her head. Her belly starts aching of jealousy because right now Pearl is in Mia's car, she's with a mother who cares about her and would never, ever abandon her, she's loved and has someone there for her. And Izzy is sitting alone in a bus station. She hates Mia. She hates that to <em>see you tomorrow</em>, Mia answered <em>see you soon</em> with a kind of sadness Izzy had never seen in her eyes. She fucking hates Mia because when she stopped in front of her house, it wasn't for her. It was to let Pearl say goodbye. Mia didn't stop for her.</p><p>A scream echoes in the night, and it's a scream of fury, a scream mostly meant to scare the loneliness away. Izzy grabs the plexiglass of the wall of the bus station and kicks it repeatedly, screaming as loud as she can. She stops when she sees the ring on her thumb, the ring Mia left on her nightstand back when she was still working at the Richardson's house. Izzy sees it, and she throws it away as hard as she can. She fucking hates them all. Then she stands up, panting, dries her wet cheeks, and starts running as fast as she can. She crosses the empty street and keeps running, hoping that the hurt will fade away if she runs until she can't breathe. At some point it's too much, and Izzy slips on the icy sidewalk, the momentum sending her flying against the closed metal curtains of a shop. Her side hits the hard surface and for a few moments, Izzy lies on the ground, struggling to breathe. She coughs in the snow, resting her head on the cold white pillow, tears running down her face, melting everything under her. Why is it so hard for anyone to care about her?</p><p>Mia didn't stop for her. No one did.</p><p>And Izzy wants to lie there forever, but she gets up, eventually. When she starts shivering under her completely wet clothes she realizes she can't spend the night outside. So she turns her brain off and walks for a while, her mind completely blank until she sees the word <em>hotel</em> written in pink neon lights. Izzy sighs in relief. She's exhausted. There's an old lady sitting in the lobby, and she narrows her eyes when she sees the small blond girl coming in. For a moment, Izzy fears she won't give her a room. But when she hands the woman her thirty dollars even though she has been asked for thirty-five, the lady doesn't protest. She gives her the keys without another word, and Izzy mumbles a thank you as she walks away.</p><p>Izzy hates Elena so much when she drops her backpack on the ground and turns on the light of her small room. She hates that she spent all of the money she had and that she knows she will have to go back. That she can't hide in this crappy hotel forever because she doesn't even have money to buy food. She hates that she didn't burn Elena's house when she had the chance. She hates that her brothers and sister stopped her. It's awfully silent in the room and Izzy cracks her knuckles to check if sound still exists.</p><p>After a while, Izzy heads to the tiny bathroom. She avoids her reflection when all of her clothes are on the ground and she steps in the shower. The water is cold in the beginning, but after a few seconds, it starts getting warmer and warmer, until it's too much. But Izzy doesn't change the temperature, she stands under the burning stream, imagining that the heat comes from a fire. From all of the little fires she almost set everywhere. Her clothes stay on the ground when she finally steps out of the bathroom, and she knows it's stupid because they won't dry correctly if she leaves them there. But Izzy can't bring herself to care. She steps on them with her bare feet, wishing they were her mother’s certitude, dreaming for a moment that she’s crushing them mercilessly again and again and again and again.</p><p>The girl slips under the sheets, her skin still burning from the excessive heat of the water, and she rolls on her belly as she always does when she’s tired but knows she won’t fall asleep. Her side hurts a little -she probably bruised her ribcage, but she doesn't check- and a moan escapes her lips when she buries her head in the pillow. She hates that she doesn't even have the strength to scream anymore.</p><p>Sleep doesn't come. Izzy doesn’t move in the dark, images of her afternoons spent at Mia’s house flashing before her eyes. Memories of those silent hours that have kept Izzy from going insane the past few months. It was too good to be true. When she finally chases the memories away, it's not late in the night anymore, it's early in the morning. She drags herself out of the bed, the cold air of the room enveloping her body as she kneels next to her bag to get her MP3 and headphones out of the small pocket. Izzy climbs back into the bed and clicks on the random button.</p><p>
  <em>The disappointed</em><br/>
<em>All shuffle round in circles</em><br/>
<em>Their placards look the same</em><br/>
<em>With a picture and a name</em><br/>
<em>Of the ones who broke their hearts</em>
</p><p>Her mother didn't try to come after her when she ran through the door a few hours ago. Izzy tries to understand what's so wrong about her. What made Elena hate her from the very beginning. She tries to understand what's so wrong about her mother, but she stops thinking about it after a while. They're both fucked up, and it's maybe the only common point Izzy will ever allow. They're fucked up opposites.</p><p>Izzy wants Mia back so badly. She wants Mia to hold her and tell her it's all going to be fine. That it's okay to be different, to fall for girls and like disturbing art, to hate most of the people in her life and sometimes wish she had never been born. But Mia is not her mother, and she's gone. So Izzy bits the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, and falls asleep with her headphone on her ears.</p><p>
  <em>The disappointed </em><br/>
<em>All congregate at my house</em><br/>
<em>Their voices sob with grief</em><br/>
<em>That they want me to be chief</em><br/>
<em>Of the tribe with broken hearts</em>
</p><p>When she gets out of her room around noon, dressed in the clothes that spent the night on the bathroom floor and smelled like humidity, Izzy doesn't really know what to do. She hovers in the corridor for a while, eyeing the paintings and the photos hanging on the wall. She hates them all. The more she looks at them, the more she feels like the people who chose to put those pieces on the wall were either blind, or dead. So dead that they couldn’t feel how empty those photos were. When she can’t take it anymore, Izzy sighs and exits the corridor. She’s hungry. </p><p>When she walks into the lobby and sees the images of a fire on the small TV of the room, she forgets about her stomach. All she can comprehend is the red and orange flames swallowing a house, <em>her</em> house, burning in front of her eyes on the local news. Izzy can’t move. She’s mesmerized, unable to stare at anything but at the name <em>Richardson</em> on the mailbox, as the entire house is being consumed by flames behind it.</p><p>It's weird because she's pretty sure she didn't light the fire.</p><p>Izzy stands there, ignoring the old woman when she clears her throat and asks her if she's leaving, watching with a small smile her mother's world burn into ashes. She wonders who set the fire. Maybe Elena did it herself. Or maybe it was her siblings. Izzy doesn't care. She knows they all did it in their own little ways, and now there were little fires everywhere.</p><p>Izzy almost feels free. She knows she's not, but everything she hates is burning in front of her, and she thinks it's probably how Mia felt when she watched that wildfire at dawn, fifteen years ago. </p><p>"I need to make a phone call," Izzy murmurs when she finally detaches her eyes from the screen and hands the key she has been gripping in her palm to the old woman.</p><p>"There's a phone behind you. Don’t make it last more than five minutes."</p><p>Izzy's hands tremble when she types the numbers she learned by heart a few nights ago. She doesn't know why she's doing this, it's useless and she knows it. Mia is gone, her house is empty, and yet she can't help but try. If only to know that for a few minutes, the house of the artist won't be silent anymore. The phone will ring, and then no one will answer and everything will be quiet again. She presses the call button and leans against the wall, eyes closed, ready to listen to the beeping for the five minutes the old woman has granted her before hanging up.</p><p>"<em>Izzy</em>?"</p><p>Her eyes snap open when she hears Elena's voice at the other end of the phone. The voice Izzy hates so much, the voice she heard yelling that no one never even wanted her in the first place. She hears this voice and it hurts, and she hears the nickname Elena has always hated so much. For once, it seems like her mother doesn't want to see her as Isabelle, and it's a weird combination.</p><p>"<em>Izzy, is that you?</em>" </p><p>It sounds like Elena has been crying. Her voice seems distant, and Izzy wonders what she's doing at Mia's house. Maybe she's looking for her. Or maybe she just wants to make sure Mia is really gone.</p><p>"<em>Izzy, please, I'm sorr-</em>"</p><p>She hangs up. </p>
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